Why get all serious and complicate a competition that essentially encourages and celebrates Urdu writing in a very basic and simple manner? It’s supposed to be a nice little leisure experience, nothing to fancy and formal. Writing should be the star, if some members wish to remain anonymous, then their wish should be respected, for that, I once again repeat that it’s the writing that should be the real deal. I appreciate the curiosity to know the name behind the words, but it shouldn’t be the issue.
It’s a very new and unique competition, and sharing your creative writing with others can be a very daunting task and a nerve wrecking and downright intimating experience. So it’s okay to have some flexibility and show some encouragement to the members who are creative but aren’t confident about their skills yet.
I’d request the mods to take a stance immediately, lay down some rules now and carry on planning the next edition. Why should the competition and the people who enjoy writing or reading the entries should suffer?
I agree Jolie, but comments like ‘we won’t be participating next time’ in this thread and in PMs we received are discouraging. We made our possible efforts to accommodate all posters and encourage people to do post entries themselves and encourage others, but at times we feel that people are bored with continuous competition and therefore took break. We will hopefully come with new competitions next month (i.e by end of next week)
Some of the response have been quite disappointing, I agree. I wasn’t expecting such reaction over some people’s wish to remain anonymous. Besides, writing creatively about love and feeling is so much different than writing a piece on child labour. Former gets quite personal.
Mahool’s doing a very good job, if he’s happy to arrange and manage competition at it’s current pace, then that should be fine. Since the competition only requires you to write anything between 100 -200 words, I don’t think its such a big ask. I believe we’re seeing a rise in the volume of entries we receive, so that’s one indicator of competition’s success. The regular the competition is, the more constant the habit of writing will become. we have a quite few fluent Urdu writers and speakers from Cafe and surrounding forums, I’d be lovely to see all those members take part in it, just write! Experiment with different writing styles, words, forms and structure…it doesn’t have to be perfect.
hmmm…baat to aapkii kisii Had tak bajaa hai magar shauq dilaane se shauq paidaa hotaa hai…ham agar bharpoor koshisheN kareN k ziyaada se ziyaada log is meN shirkat kareN to koii vajah qaabil e qayaas nahiiN k aisaa honaa naa mumkinaat meN se hai.
himmat e mardaaN/aurtaaN, madad e aurtaaN/mardaaN baashad!
Jolie, the issue here is not peoples’ curiosity to know the name behind the words. Like I said in my post earlier, given the nature of this competition, it is understandable why certain participants might want to remain anonymous. The issue is one of fairness. It’s like you entering a talent show competition. You go on stage to perform but when it’s others’ turn they hide behind the curtains for whatever reasons and the judges allow that. My issue is not so much with the participants, but more so with the handlers. To be honest, after this little stunt, I feel rather exposed. I didnt like the surprise element after the fact.
It’s easy for you as a spectator to comment that people are being too sensitive. It’s not just one person protesting here, right? Something must be amiss.
